How I Have Improved My Writing Skills

This semester in English 1110.03, my writing skills greatly improved. Ever since I was a kid, writing was something I struggled with. Throughout high school and even entering college, I still noticed that I was lacking in writing essays. Let’s explore the many ways I have improved in writing essays.

Ever since I was in high school, my teachers used to get on me about my writing skills, they would say things like “ if you planning on going to college, you need to drastically improve your skills in writing”. Coming into this class I didn’t have much confidence in myself to write all of these essays. I knew that this class was based on writing essays and having past teachers tell me I need to drastically improve scared me. I would constantly make grammatical errors such as run-on sentences, mistakes in apostrophe, lack of subject agreement, and homonyms.

I would say I still struggle with homonyms, but I noticed I did improve a little. In high school, I thought that the teachers were crazy assigning us 2-3 page essays to write. I remember struggling to start off those essays, I had no clue what to write first and my thoughts were everywhere. My teacher’s found it really difficult to understand what I was trying to say. English was my least favorite subject in high school, teachers expected us to remember all of these grammatical rules and essay format. I never understood the concept of grammar and all of the rules just confused me. I also noticed that my vocabulary skills had dramatically improved. Coming into this class my vocabulary skills where evaluate to a 9th grader. Taking this class wasn’t a smooth sail for me, I had so many obstacles I had to overcome.

Having taken this class, my perspective in writing an essay has changed. I always thought that you just gather all of your sources and information and just start off with a draft. Learning all the steps in writing an essay has really helped me become a better writer. It was interesting how we learned that there were 2 types of brainstorming writers, those who use the left side of the brain, and those who use the right side. Learning this helped me figure out which side I was and helped me better brainstorm my essays. Learning to brainstorm in 3 different ways really helped start my essays off, something I have been struggling with for many years. Gathering all of my dates was something I also struggle with when we learned to use ASB, something I never used before it really helped me organize all of my sources and made it easier for me to go back to them.

I noticed that the coaching sessions had a great impact on how smooth my essays where. It was nice to have a teacher go over your essay with you and point out where you need to make some adjustments. Another step that we did in writing our essays where the peer conference. At first, I was really skeptical about letting students help other students. I thought that no one would take them seriously. Surprisingly I was totally wrong, I was impressed by how many different feedbacks I got on my essay. Peer conference has taught me that I really need to proofread my essay out loud. I was surprised by how many mistakes I made and totally skipped over. Have 3 sets of new eyes reading my paper unquestionably improved my essays.

Having completed this class, I discovered that through hard work and dedication, writing a good paper can be achievable. I have learned that following the steps in writing an essay can greatly impact your essay. The only thing I would’ve changed if I could retake this class was the ways I approach each essay. I would give myself more time and start them off earlier. Overall, this class has thought me many skills I would use in the future and undoubtedly improved my writing skills.